Old guy meets new machine

[btiffin]

Hello everyone.

I'm starting to think I might break with a 20 year tradition and buy new. Unfortunately I'm so used to just picking up refurbished machinery that I'm completely out of the loop regarding robust quality components.

I'm looking for a solid developer box that I can rely on, but I don't need anything flashy. So ... given that I'd like

a fairly fast, but not too fast (I'm old) processor

that could run Debian host and guest virtualization of various other OS'es, but unlikely ever more than one guest at a time,

support two semi-fat hard drives in a semi-hot fail over setup and I'm pretty used to wired networking,

umm ... I care not for super blasty video games but do need a Windows OS buried under the GRUB for those times when the little one plops in her Dora DVDs.

The bar is set at a 15gig HD 1gig RAM Pentium 4 Compaq Evo running Lenny and price point in the low thousand range,

would you have any advice? This is my AaFH phase before digging in and RTFM. I'll admit there are a lot of details for the less than 10 major component points for the average personal computer so I'd appreciate any hints or opinions. It kinda has to be PC architecture as I'll need to be learning some things for work. A personal annoyance factor is noise; quieter is better, high pitched whine sucketh.

Cheers and thanks for listening

[DemonWasp]

You probably want either a Core 2 Duo or an AMD X2 CPU. Both of these cover a range from "pretty decent" to "quite awesome"; I'd recommend something in an e6600 or e8400 as they're relatively cheap and quite...zippy. I'd suggest no less than 2GB of RAM, preferably DDR2 (DDR3 is no faster in most cases, and slower in some). If $250 for a CPU is too rich for your blood, go for an AMD.

For your graphics card, get a motherboard that has integrated video (they're quite fast now) or if you need dedicated, get a low-end nVidia card, like a 9400 or 9600 (whatever GS/GT they attach; they're usually pretty similar). Dedicated is going to cost more, but be faster; you can probably get dedicated for +$60, or integrated for +$40. In particular, you can probably get a "fanless" variant that won't produce any noise, just has a larger heatsink; I have a silenced 8400GS in my server and it's probably under 50dB total (whisper-quiet).

For hard drives, don't go for the 1.5TB ones, they've been having "failure issues" recently. Hit up the 640GB or 1TB ones for price per space, or a nice 500GB if you can't see yourself sucking down media files or heavy software / games. Seagate or Western Digital are my preferences but they're all damned near the same (and all are around 23dB, quieter than you can hear over your own breathing for the most part).

For PSU, go for something a little excessive for the rig. Probably 600W or more. Spend a little extra to make sure you get an efficient one; this will require it to run its fans at a slower speed, thus making less noise.

For your case, get something with a muffler for your CPU fan (some of them have this weird "cone of silence" thing that sits above the CPU's fan and eats most of its noise pretty effectively). Again, I have one on my server. Since your components are relatively low-end and not overclocked, don't worry about having super-duper extra fans. Get something easy to clean (dust heats up your machine, forcing fans to run faster and louder).

If you have a choice of fans, larger, slower fans make less noise per unit of airflow. I have a machine with 7 fans and the noisest one is the GPU fan (tiny, fast); the quietest is the huge one (200mm, 400rpm).

You can probably get such a machine for $600-800 and it would be about 8-16 times as fast as your listed setup, excepting HDD access times which haven't improved much, though throughput has.

[wtd]

Buy a Mac laptop. For storage, add a Drobo. Aside from the fact that it's using EFI instead of a classic BIOS it fully meets your needs.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

I second wtd. Get a MacBook Pro and spend your time developing instead of fiddling with the hardware, OS, drivers, etc. (And if your budget won't stretch that far, the aluminum MacBook is quite nice.)

[andrew.]

Get a Mac laptop. Since you're looking for something not too flashy and expensive go with the MacBook. Although it uses EFI instead of BIOS, you can install a program called rEFIt that allows you to multiboot with a whole bunch of OS's like Linux distros, Mac, Windows, etc.

[rdrake]

...or he could just get a desktop which will be substantially cheaper and much less likely to get broken. It's also what he seems to want.

He also wants Linux, which screams Thinkpad if he were even considering laptops.

A quick check of newegg.ca gave me a machine for $689.99 with the following specs:

• 2.33 GHz core 2 quad core Intel CPU
  
• 4 GB DDR2 RAM
  
• 500 GB HDD
  
• NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
  

Comes with Vista Home Premium 64-bit which also fits in with your requirements. Repartition it down to < 50 GB and leave the rest to Linux. It lacks a monitor, but you can pick a decent one up for < $200 easily... or just reuse your old one.

Good luck.

[andrew.]

Oh, I didn't know that you wanted a desktop with Linux. In that case, do what rdrake said. Build a decent desktop. I normally buy from Tiger Direct and Canada Computers because I can go to the store and pick it up. Newegg is good as well but you have to have it shipped (which I don't like). You can also have it shipped with Tiger Direct and Canada Computers though.

[md]

I recommend a raid5 setup on 3 500gb drives - gives you 1TB of storage, and yet is more reliable then 1TB drives (I wait a bit for the top of the line to become more reliable )

Put those in a desktop with a core i7 and your golden.

[btiffin]

Thanks for all the inputs gentlemen.

Holy crap ... 500gb drives are commodity units now? Oh woe for the days of 360K floppies.

And yeah, I'd like a Mac, but that ain't what's in use at work, and I kinda want to dig in to details that will map closer to my day job reality.

Once again, thanks everyone. I'll gladly accept more opinions, brand names, model numbers.

I'll be thinking this over, far more than I have over the last few decades and when I make the buy I want to go in with a clue.

I'll admit, I seem to have been livin' the low-life. So as long as no one gets electrocuted, I doubt I'll be dissappointed with the new street level machinery.

Cheers
Edit; typos

[Prabhakar Ragde]

btiffin @ Tue May 05, 2009 11:57 pm wrote:

And yeah, I'd like a Mac, but that ain't what's in use at work, and I kinda want to dig in to details that will map closer to my day job reality.

Macs use Intel hardware now, and run Windows natively (though, on the rare occasion I have need for it, I prefer to run it virtualized).

If they're banned at work, or if certain models are preferred, then you should outline your constraints. Otherwise, there's no reason to exclude them from consideration.

[BigBear]

What do you mean by natetively?

[[Gandalf]]

BigBear @ 2009-05-06, 7:53 am wrote:

What do you mean by natetively?

It's natively, and as usual any internet search will give a decent answer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_mode

For example, you can't run Turing on Linux natively (at least with the commonly available versions), so you're stuck with emulators and such.

[BigBear]

so you can run turing on mac natively?

[Tallguy]

umm yeah!! mac now have intel chips, everything that windows runs so can macs

[Insectoid]

Tallguy, I wouldn't be so quick on that assumption. Everything Windows runs a Mac can run, to the extent that an Acer can run it, or a Dell. You still have to be running Windows on the Mac hardware to run those programs. Some, with minimal OS requirements can be run in emulation on OS X, but often with bugs and glitches.

There is a bran I know of with great quality for a low price, the Nebula Power System. Core 2 Duo processor, 160gb HD (I think), a decent looking and functional case, etc. The store I work at sells them as a package with a keyboard, mouse and 19" LCD monitor for about $800. Optional upgrades include 22" monitor and subscriptions to Avast! and SuperAntiSpyware. We pre-load it with the Avast! demo, Nero, and do full updates on Windows before selling. we disable a lot of the crap as well. I'm sure we could aquire one without Windows to save even more money.